Finnick's Final Letter
by watercolourlovesong
Summary: This is Finnick's goodbye to Annie before the reaping for the Quarter Quell. Please note that this is my first ever fanfiction so please don't cut out my tongue or worse if it isn't that great!


Annie.

This is a just in case letter and I hope they never have to give it to you and I hope when I get back and I kiss you and we laugh and we celebrate, I can burn it and it will be forgotten forever.

I hope.

This is how it begins: I am a young man eroded by sorrows and guilt like a cliff by the sea. At night I walk barefoot among moonlight and shadows because they are all I have ever known.

You, my love, saved me and I can never repay it. When we first met it was bitter laughter and stolen glances and holding on. We were both doomed and we knew it, and maybe that was the end but it was the beginning.

I was selfish, you know. I could barely watch your Games because I thought you were already gone and out of reach. What was the point?

But I did watch. I watched as you dug the knife into that girl's chest and how you cried for a day after it and how you screamed out in agony that they shouldtake you too, take you instead, take you please.

I could do nothing but watch as you watched, as you watched the boy from your district die and how you were screaming and we were so far away but we were both the same, both the same. Watching.

When you won the weeks went by in an ashy, frantic confusion. You woke up screaming out in agony and I put my arms around you as if that could somehow protect you. Although how could I protect you from your own mind?

The Victory Tour was maybe the worst of all. We both spiralled into insanity and I returned tothe train that night of the Capitol party at five am and you asked me why and I told you because I had to. Those nights it was you that wiped my eyes and protected me with your arms. Those were the longest nights and you screamed and I think I did too. They always said it was me who kept you sane but they were wrong. I think it's the other way around.

I remember when things started to get better. The days got warmer and the nights became brighter and there were spring flowers. We planted some one day in Mags's garden and she said we were too sweet and that she'd help us if it weren't for her back.

There were a lot of beach days. We kicked around in the water and climbed rocks and race across the shore. But the best days were when we would lay down on the sand and I would watch your face in complete concentration as you made a daisy chain, impatiently brushing your dark hair out of your eyes. Or we'd practice tying knots using the long rushes growing on the outskirts of the beach**. **

Sometimes days would go before you "went away." That's what I called it when you'd stare into space for hours at a time, sometimes in the morning sat down for breakfast in your nightgown, sometimes in the evening when we watched the rickety old television. Sometimes even in the middle of a conversation, or while walking through the market.

One time, I heard a man call you "the mad, possessed girl." His nose hasn't been quite central since.

It made me so angry, how you were The Mad Girl andI was The Capitol's Whore. As if that was all there was to us, as if we were jars on dusty shelves and those were are labels in neat, wearing-away print.

You've been getting so much better Annie, until this awful awful Quell. I know you're devastated right now but I feel I should tell you that if your name is called at the Reaping tomorrow, Mags is going to volunteer. I hope to God another name is chosen and you will be safe and sound at home with Mags there to protect you and hold your hand. But I can't promise that; it isn't enough, it never will be.

Annie, my love. I am clinging to every star wishing that this isn't our goodbye but if it is I need you to remember the good days. When we collected seashells and when we wrote poems and when we ran in the rain and all those mornings in the sea and days under the willow trees and nights at the beach gazing at the stars like we were unlimited.

If this is how it ends, know you'll always be my anchor.

With my eternal love,

Finnick.


End file.
